One of the main tasks of the food industry is the creation of a method in which the long-term storage of food supplies will become longer. At the household level, consumers want to see a device that not only helps in the storage of products, but also helps to improve their taste.
In this article we will look at what we managed to do along the way and why we need a manual meat injector.
How it all began
The earliest known method of harvesting and preserving meat products is dry salting. It provides for aging meat sprinkled with salt in vats for a long time. Over time, to increase the shelf life of meat products, they began to be placed in a solution with a high concentration of salt. This has significantly reduced processing time before harvesting meat. First, salting was carried out, and then the meat was smoked.
Meanwhile, research in this area continued and led to the fact that in order to reduce the time required for preservation, manufacturers came to the invention of a machine for massaging meat. Its purpose is to stabilize the heterogeneous system "meat - salt solution". The design of this machine was a container on which a rotating handle-blade is located. Using this device, a finished product with high-quality taste characteristics could be obtained after twenty-four to thirty-six hours of processing.
Injector creation
At the next stage, a toggle switch, otherwise called a massager, was created, first consisting of a rotating simple chamber, and later with evacuation. Recently, it was replaced by devices containing a cooling function and a pulsating vacuum.
A little later, in order to accelerate the time of impregnation of meat products with brine (saline solution of high concentration), a technology was invented that envisaged the forced introduction of brine into raw materials. She began to be called manual injection. The method was that brine was injected into the carcass femoral artery through a manual meat injector. It, in turn, spread further through the existing circulatory system in a natural way. This technology greatly facilitated and accelerated this process, but it still required a lot of time.
Then a more advanced technique was created: with a special manual injector for meat, the brine was injected under pressure into the meat raw material through several built-in needles. Such a device is used in small industries now.
Product Limitations
The use of an injector, like any apparatus, has its own conditions and limitations. For this device, they are as follows:
- the size of the raw material into which the brine will be introduced must be at least thirty centimeters in depth or in diameter;
- with a manual meat injector it is impossible to achieve a uniform distribution of the solution entry points over the entire surface;
- for large pieces, the processing will have to be carried out repeatedly because of the small number of needles on the machine - from one to three;
- a different amount of solution is injected into different parts of the raw material - the formation of edema in areas saturated with brine is possible.
Despite the fact that the initial purpose of the device was the preservation and preservation of raw materials, at present the manual meat injector is used for the manufacture of new technology products - meat delicacies.
Automatic injectors
To solve the problems caused by manual extrusion, the developers were tasked with creating an automatic injector. The first such device was designed by the Swiss company Suhner AG ("Suner") in 1967. This had a great impact on the preservation and pickling of meat - new opportunities appeared. They consisted of introducing directly marinades and flavorings into raw materials, softening (tendering) meat. Also, this method allowed to significantly reduce costs on spices and other ingredients.
Advantages of an automatic device over a manual meat injector:
- organoleptic characteristics of products are improved due to frequent punctures;
- meat, poultry and fish have a better appearance after processing;
- the ability to introduce various prescription additives into the raw materials for the original taste;
- a significant reduction in pickling time (a person, using a manual injector for meat and chicken, performs similar operations five times longer);
- uniform distribution of saline or marinade throughout the piece - the human factor is excluded;
- after processing, a more juicy and tender product is obtained due to numerous punctures and tendering knives;
- the opportunity to present the buyer a low-grade meat in a more pleasant way.
DIY meat injector
Currently, extrusion is used not only in the food industry and cooking, but also at home. When cooking dishes from pieces of meat, it is important that the raw material is well salted or pickled and after further processing, becoming a finished product, has a pleasant texture and delicate taste. In home use, seasonings can be infusions of herbs, cream, a mixture of oil with garlic, pepper, etc.
Using a syringe through a special needle, saline or liquid seasonings are injected into pieces of meat, chicken or fish. The amount of added additives should be approximately fifteen to twenty percent of the weight of the piece. Further, the raw material is left to absorb, and you can simply put it in a dry container, or you can in the same mixture that was introduced inside. Moreover, if salting out ham in the usual way takes ten days, then after extrusion, one or two is enough. When the meat is marinated, it can be baked or smoked.
If there is not at hand an industrial-made extrusion device, then making a manual meat injector for yourself will not be difficult. To do this, you will need only a regular large-capacity medical syringe with an elastic band at the end of the piston and a screw head on which a large-diameter needle is wound. The device is ready. Although the application of the marinade with it will not be uniform, it is quite suitable for domestic use.
Precautions
If possible, then for more effective work, you can purchase a manual injector for meat and chicken IR-1. Structurally, three needles with large holes are built into it, so that the introduction of a brine or marinade will be more uniform. In addition, due to the numerous perforations, the meat will be softer, and its processing speed is much higher. The meat will be soft with a crispy crust.
But when buying semi-finished products for further cooking, you need to carefully study the inscriptions on the packages. If raw materials have been extruded, this should be indicated. In addition, the inscription should tell about the composition of the mixture or the ingredients that were used for this procedure. For example, to obtain soft meat after frying, raw materials add marinade with ascorbic acid, which also gives an appetizing golden crust. Also, by extrusion, phosphates and carrageenan can be added to bind the liquid, which is used by unscrupulous manufacturers to increase the weight of the product. In permissible doses, these elements are not hazardous and are authorized by the authorities. But exceeding the permissible concentration can harm health.
Conclusion
From the foregoing, it is clear that injecting meat manually or industrially has undeniable advantages over conventional pickling or pickling. The application of this method makes the finished product juicy, tasty, appetizing in appearance.